spring 2025/Lee
“I need more joy, Jackie,” the confession burned as it came out of my mouth. The school year had started hopeful and new, as it always does. Then, the doldrums of September hit us, and the mundaneness was settling in. The workload seemed heavy, and the freshness had worn off. Goodness knows how much my kids had also been burdened by my lack of joy.
As I confessed this, I knew I wasn’t the only one who sometimes felt like a cog in a wheel in my own home. This feeling is not a rarity. It’s not relegated to the morally weak or the control freak. No; rather, this joylessness can hit any one of us homeschool moms. How does one find joy?
There are a million answers to this one question; at the same time, there is only one answer. The short answer is Christ is our joy. The long answer is we find joy in imitating the Creator because He made us creative beings. He is Lord over all of our lives, including the interdependent parts of play and art-making.
My own motherhood experience has taught me that the more playful and creative I am, the more joyful the home can be. It’s life-giving for the whole family. I believe there are three main ways to get creative again and bring joy back: imitation, inspiration, and aspiration.
Imitation
Imitation is “an act or instance of following” (Merriam-Webster). It is learning side-by-side. Twentieth-century painter Norman Rockwell was known for capturing the wonder in everyday life. He once said, “The commonplaces of America are to me the richest subjects in art.” Do you believe this?
The act of following happens regularly in our homes. It can be a wonderful thing. Just imagine this scene: grandmother, mother, and daughter are working in the kitchen together to bake said grandmother’s favorite chocolate chip cookies. Can you imagine that in a Norman Rockwell painting? I sure can!
The picture I’m trying to paint is that in mothering, we have so many chances to be imitated, but who are we imitating? What kind of joy arises from imitation? I think imitation plays a huge role in creating art. It’s sitting down to receive instruction or input and being okay with our initial blunders. It’s an immersive experience as we become more and more in tune with the making process.
Play also puts you fully into a moment, which makes it an immersive experience. Play, like art imitation, is a creative process. In both play and art-making, you are learning new skills. You keep building upon what you learned before. Let’s consider how children play. They start with a premise. “Let’s play cops and robbers!” Then they organize their groups, and because they are imitating the art of being a cop or being a robber, referencing either their book intake, movie intake, or real-world experience, they can play out the scene and build upon it. It’s an immersive experience, and shapes some formative memories.
Imitation fosters joy because one is learning something new in an immersive, even playful way. It’s a way of getting “unstuck” from the “cog in a wheel” motions of life. It is not forced but organic. Some examples of creative imitation can be: taking voice lessons to imitate a variety of tunes, playing with clay or watercolor and experiencing new techniques, becoming a connoisseur of an author’s work, and playing around with writing in his or her style.
While imitation certainly can be joyful, it is not the only way to bring back joy through creativity.
Inspiration
Inspiration is “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative” (Merriam-Webster). Another definition: the act of drawing in breath. It makes sense that inspiration is a dance between passivity and activity. One must breathe in to breathe out. In order to be breathed into, we must be passive. God is speaking to us and showing us a new thing (or reviving an old thing).
On the other hand, in order to become skillful and make art, we must be active. We have to stick with something without becoming lazy at one end of the spectrum or too serious at the other.
A posture of collaboration is important in diminishing the inevitable slide into seriousness. Every time I’ve taken myself too seriously, I’ve simultaneously felt the joy being sucked out of my being. So, working with others and bouncing ideas off one another is essential to joyful inspiration.
Some personal examples of inspiration are: collaborating with other authors to create an event, collaborating with a publisher to write a book, and bouncing book ideas off other people. You might collaborate with fellow moms about new recipes and how to implement them. A lot of people in our old homeschool co-op loved to bake homemade bread, so they were constantly collaborating and inspiring one another with new bread recipes. Do you teach in a homeschool co-op? I bet you are inspired by various homeschool moms and resources to put together a delightful array of class offerings.
Joyful inspiration is active passivity. It is seeking out but allowing yourself to draw in breath from external sources. I am not particularly inspiring to myself. I must seek external, higher sources of inspiration. God is the true and better Creator, and He made his creation beautiful. Why not seek out the inspiration there?
Aspiration
Aspiration is “a drawing of something in, out, up, or through by or as if by suction…” (Merriam-Webster). Many of us moms know about the bulb syringe or “aspirator.” Does that paint a picture? When you are honing in on a creative endeavor, you are not experimenting and playing around anymore. You are focused.
Aspiration is honing in and following what we believe God is calling us to in the creative realm. It’s not that we don’t have joy in this process. We surely do! In order to not exhaust our joy, we need to come to terms with our own limits. We are creatures in need of rest. If you are so focused on the creative process that you forget to rest, what do you think could happen? Exhaustion? Problematic priorities? Unrealistic expectations for perfection? We must identify problems in our priorities and kill unrealistic expectations.
After all, God created us to merely be imitators of Himself. This side of heaven, we won’t know what it’s like to live a completely creative, joyful life. In heaven, everything will be made perfect and new. Our work will be for the sake of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. This side of eternity, we can practice aspiration, albeit imperfectly. Some examples might include: practicing a daily writing rhythm—keeping in mind that a “yes” to writing is sacrificing other things—or acting on a big creative goal (i.e., starting a business, writing a book). These endeavors come with sacrifice this side of heaven. But they are shadows of a more perfect and fully redeemed art.
Here are some questions to ask before you embark on a creative pursuit, be it in imitation, inspiration, or aspiration:
- Can you find joy in this creative pursuit?
- Will your family benefit from it?
- Does your creative pursuit bring glory to God?
- In your inspiration, are you making yourself present to the true Vine, Jesus?